


Arbor Day

by nyctanthes



Series: Prompt Ficlets [6]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Experiments in style and voice, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Making sense of questionable plotting through fic, Season 4 what season 4, Through Season 3, three sentence ficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-26 15:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18719926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyctanthes/pseuds/nyctanthes
Summary: Julia in the moments between.





	Arbor Day

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the 2018-19 Three Sentence Ficathon on DW hosted by rthstewart.
> 
> In response to a prompt from rthstewart: "[Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves](http://seananmcguire.com/songbook.php?id=238)".

 

She’s a parable, a cautionary tale.

_What happens to little big girls who desire too much, get too great for their skirts? To girls who dare to believe they’re somebody special and have the tits to demand (POWER) what they know they deserve? Unspeakable, godly acts._

She’s her own redemption.

_Did you hear? Lost her Shade, proceeded to do what any sensible person freed of nuisances like empathy, conscience and good will would: disregard the needs of those closest to her and mock their callow talk of saving souls. Travel to a fairytale kingdom where she’s viewed as a queen. Repay her subjects’ loyalty by burning a vast, life-giving natural resource to cinders in the time it takes to say “Oops, not sorry.” In the name of her just war she encouraged a good man to kill himself. A just war which, if you spare a moment, looks an awful lot like vengeance. And then, after everything she did, after her multitude of grief and rage driven (and completely, absolutely, perfectly sane) double-crosses, when victory was within her grasp, she opened her hand, unable to resist a heartfelt plea, a mother’s love._

In return, she’s gifted the world.

_I planted a seed, for you to grow._

To start, the palest shoots, frail and insubstantial, their wormy roots one rainstorm away from losing their grip on earth. Washed to the surface, left to twist helplessly on slick concrete. With time and care - building on her light, her heat - they strengthen, turn a waxy, emerald green. They fill her up. She knew she was empty but didn’t know just how deep the dry well ran until all the water came rushing back.

Yet all she can think is

_Take it back, take it back, take it back._

Our Lady of Bullshit. Our Lady of What’s Done is Done. Our Lady of Forgive and Let Live. Our Lady of I’m So Sorry, I Was Out of Town and Forgot to Inform You What My Demon Hellspawn of a Son Had Planned For You. She Who Has Ruined My Life.

Who sits. Wrapped in white. Luminous and unwavering. Unyielding in her hope and faith.

_It doesn’t matter where it comes from. It matters what you do with it._

Who claims the horror visited upon her – manipulated into abetting a massacre; violated and pitched to the ground like a rag, to soak up streams, rivers, lakes of blood; left with something growing, metastasizing inside her, the size of a pearl of rice and already sowing destruction everywhere she turns, making her complicit in its wanton fight for survival - can somehow be turned into something _good._ That a piece, another _seed_ (she says it, she has the gall to say it) of Reynard, the most essential part of him, is what she deserves. That two wrongs make everything all right. 

_Do you think the chosen want to be chosen?_

Who faces her across the table, doesn’t look away. Who listens as she speaks and responds to her _concerns_. It appears to be a discussion, but that’s simply another masquerade. It’s not and it never was a choice. Gift, curse, penance, bribe. Willful act of immortal stupidity. It doesn’t matter how she defines it. The magic, the seed, Reynard. All hers.  

_If I could give it to you, I would._

She zigs and zags (she rubs her wrists raw), but this time there’s no escape. No Mudang, no re-ensouled, rabbit pale ex-Niffin with a (too late, too late) death wish can save her.

She resigns herself to her fate. No human – not an especially magical one, not a horrifically wronged one, not one owed more than an immortal can ever hope to repay - is in a position to barter with gods.

(She will never, ever, never accept it as what she deserves.)

They ask, she relinquishes. The emptiness that is a life without magic, the glassy, Potemkin comfort of an eye for an eye. The blood, tears and bone, the sweat and dirt and pain that connect her to her fellow magicians, to everyone she’s fucked and fucked over.

They give, she receives: power beyond what she imagined.

(And her imagination was vast, those first, fevered days with Marina. Day bleeding into night into day. Rain and heat, sun and wind, moonshine and starlight all the same to her. All that mattered their investigations, catalyzed by her nurtured but heretofore dormant willingness to set everything and everyone aside in her desire – no, her wild and calamitous and dreadful _need_ \- to quench this bottomless thirst.)

More reluctantly, she accepts that the power comes with a muzzy, stoned love for the world, a soft focus feeling that dulls the edges, makes bearable what otherwise might be too much.

While their backs are turned she receives from them a final, unwitting gift: understanding. Look beyond the surface razzle dazzle to what’s underneath, and the gods are no different, no better than a no-can-do Brakebills professor, a must-not-do Library bureaucrat. They justify their actions with: _It’s not your destiny. It’s not your time. It’s not your place. We know what we’re doing. You? Are not ready. One day you will see that we are right._ They would be better off saying what they really mean. _It’s about what we want. You, Our Lady of the Tree, our baby goddess, are simply a tool to get us there._

She made the mistake of listening to them, allowed them to persuade her that she still had so much to learn.

She forgot the only thing they can show her is how not to be, what not to do.

She’s always been her own best teacher.

When she gives it all up. Empties herself of everything she’s sacrificed herself for, once more draining the well, ripping grinding pulping those roots and leaves for others, for everyone else, for the world. So much harder than it would have been a few short weeks ago, sated for the first time in forever, heels digging, skin tearing, nails splitting. For them. She doesn’t have more than a minute to miss it.

**Author's Note:**

> My thoughts and feelings about Julia cannot be encapsulated in three sentences.


End file.
